


Antoshka

by Finely Honed (jaqen_hgar)



Series: дезинформация [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Not Iron Man 3 Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 01:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1880238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaqen_hgar/pseuds/Finely%20Honed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if on instinct, upon waking from his night terror, Bucky found himself slipping through the darkness of the tower with only one destination in mind, as if somehow pulled by the memory of dirty, calloused fingers curled possessively around his bionic wrist. It wasn’t until he was almost there that it occurred to him that Tony might be asleep, or otherwise occupied.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Antoshka

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after The Secret, before JARVIS.

As if on instinct, upon waking from his night terror, Bucky found himself slipping through the darkness of the tower with only one destination in mind, as if somehow pulled by the memory of dirty, calloused fingers curled possessively around his bionic wrist. It wasn’t until he was almost there that it occurred to him that Tony might be asleep, or otherwise occupied.

“Is he awake?”

“Sir is expecting you,” JARVIS answered, and Bucky bit back the sudden flood of appreciation that threatened to leave him weeping in the hallway.

Sure enough, Tony was there in the workshop, looking almost bored, or as if Bucky had been expected hours earlier and was running late. There was no comment made about his bare feet, the sweat soaked tank top, the wrinkled pajama pants, or the tangled mess of hair pulled back into a ponytail. Stark just continued to spin in his chair, tossing something spherical up into the air and catching it.

“You really were expecting me.”

It wasn’t a question, and Tony didn’t treat it as such, one shoulder twitching up in a half shrug, as if to say, _of course_ , trying to project relaxed indifference, even as his eyes narrowed. Something in the assessing look made the hairs on the back of Bucky’s neck rise away from his skin, a shudder running through him, his heart beating the staccato rhythm; run, run, _run_!

“Hey, no, stick around,” Tony said ( _he had the oddest feeling Tony had heard his thoughts_ ) rising from his seat, expression suddenly soft around the edges. 

Bucky stopped backing out of the room. Tony chucked the ball he had been playing with, and Barnes snatched it from the air before it could hit him in the face, twitching at the sound of the hard plastic smacking against his metallic palm. 

“Sleep is overrated, I always say that, ask anyone. Ask JARVIS.”

“Sir is exceptionally skilled at avoiding sleep,” and for some reason the put upon disembodied voice of JARVIS was soothing, far more soothing than it had any right to be. Something heard between the words, writ in the dark circles under Tony’s eyes made Bucky feel like he was in the right place afterall. “Might I add, this does not negate the value of one pursuing this worthy endeavor.”

“Hey, I do some of my best work when sleep deprived, so,” Tony paused to stretch, working the kinks out of his neck, then refocused on Bucky. “So what sort of stuff gets you screaming in the night?” 

Bucky flinched, but Stark was holding his hands up expectantly, waiting for the ball to be thrown back. For one long moment, Bucky had to fight the urge to crush the ball in his hand, but the moment passed, and he lobbed it back to Stark instead, putting a bit more heat behind it than necessary.

Tony pulled a face at him, somewhere between friendly and taunting. “Sorry, was I supposed to pretend that we’re just two normal, well adjusted guys?”

“Falling.” Bucky didn’t bother to catch the ball when it was thrown back to him. It rolled across the floor after bouncing harmlessly off of his chest, sounding impossibly loud; the customary abrasive music was missing from the workshop for some reason. “Steve’s face, and falling.”

And he could feel it again, spinning out into the void, the rush of air around him, unable even to breathe, knowing it was over, thinking maybe it was better that way ( _no more pretending_ ), dying some kind of hero. Of course _this_ would be one of the memories to actually survive. He’d hardly had time for final thoughts, or the whole life flashing before his eyes thing. Just enough time to think of Steve, to hope he’d get through the war, have a good life.

“So, why aren’t you talking to Steve? Pretty sure the same thing wakes him up in the middle of the night.”

It should be insulting, or feel like he’s been told to leave, but Tony just sounds curious. Bucky shrugged again, biting into his trembling lower lip in an attempt to stop the awful scream building up somewhere in his chest. It’s rattling around in there, something caged and angry and unsafe.

He should, he knew he should. He should be wrapped up in Steve’s arms, letting him know he’d never blamed him, not for any of it, and he was so fucking grateful to have him as a friend. The only problem was, he was convinced a lot of these feelings ( _a head snaps back, a burst of blood in the air, clear the casing, load and chamber the round, seek the next target_ ) of shame, of complicity, of betrayal, of irrevocable contamination predated becoming the Winter Soldier.

“I don’t… recognize my own face some mornings,” he eventually answered, voice flat and empty, despite the way his mouth trembled. “Other times, I remember too much.”

_The fingers of a deadman creaked when you pried loose the gun they were still holding, but you needed it to stay alive a little longer, whispering an apology, blood and stink everywhere, and he can’t help but notice the enemy they’re fighting is them, its just them speaking a different language. Sons and fathers and brothers and friends and a head snaps back and blood sprays like pollen in the air..._

“Steve looks at me like he knows me, but he’s looking in the wrong place.”

The silence stretched out between them, Bucky staring at a spot on the wall just beyond Tony, unwilling to _look_ , not wanting to see what might be written across the features of his handsome face. He could hear the little _tap tap tap_ as Tony’s fingers drummed against the arc reactor, though, the sound already familiar to Barnes.

“Maybe,” Stark finally said. “Maybe not. Cap has a way of seeing what we’re unable to in ourselves.”

“Cap,” Bucky huffed, disliking the way his teeth ground together against the word, the strange anger churning up his guts. He still has a lot of conflicted feelings surrounding Captain America.

Tony was standing in front of him, then, and it seemed strange that Bucky didn’t have to physically look up at him, because the man feels _large_ , larger than life, especially in the workshop. There was an odd compulsion to sit down, or drop to one knee, to fix the imbalance, somehow, because Tony should be taller than him, and Steve should be shorter.

“It feels backwards,” he heard himself say, and it sounded like a question. “He used to be a lot shorter, you know.”

“Yeah,” Tony drawled, somehow able to follow along, and Bucky allowed himself to be led over to a couch. Sitting was better, although the urge remained to tip his head in supplication, to bite down into the mouth guard. “Guessing that’s weird, suddenly having to look up to your best friend.”

“I always looked up to him.”

Tony’s eyes were very brown, his lashes long and dark, and Bucky thought of Howard, and felt the anger twist again, a knife in his side, carving him up so that everything good left inside of him spilled out onto the floor in a hot rush.

“Your father,” he began, but then its as if his anger had been handed off to Tony like a baton in a race ( _who can explode the fastest?_ ). Whatever else he was going to say fizzled out, and instead he said, “They shouldn’t have done that to Stevie.”

“There’s a lot he shouldn’t have done,” Tony snapped, and Bucky remembered the warning Steve had given him, feeling like he’s stranded in a field laced with landmines.

He waited to be escorted out of the workshop, but Tony just got up and began rearranging some tools, everything about him exuding a false sense of relaxation. Bucky wondered how much fun it _wasn’t_ growing up with Howard Stark as your father.

“Falling, huh,” Tony said, and Bucky blinked, unable to ignore the sharpness in Stark’s eyes. “I’ve had those. Well, not _those_ , not a train, a train would be good—if a Stark is going to fall, he has to _fall._ Big, with style, you know? Like through a wormhole in space.”

Bucky attempted to process this ( _he’ll have to ask JARVIS what the hell Tony is talking about later_ ), tried his anger back on, but is simply appreciative for the fact that Tony isn’t trying to hold his hand, and help him through the pain, but is sort of… Well, it almost feels like he’s being one-upped. It reminded him of something he couldn’t quite _actually_ remember, but that might have been part of his life, once upon a time. It felt like brothers, like friends, like something he desperately needed.

“I had style. They waited until I landed before brainwashing it out of me.”

To his surprise, Tony grinned, wild and unbalanced, and Bucky thought again of JARVIS’s barb regarding sleep and the avoidance of it. Wondered how long Tony has been awake, how long hiding from sleep has been normal for this man.

“Hey, at least they knew how to accessorize,” Tony said, gesturing to the arm. “I woke up hooked to a car battery, and had to build my own in a cave.”

Bucky watched Tony’s fingers drumming against the blue glow of the arc reactor once more, added another mental _Note for JARVIS_ to his list, and slouched back against the couch, feeling relaxed for no reason whatsoever.

“I’m betting you were too much of a pain in the ass, and they _let_ you escape just to get rid of you,” he heard himself saying, and decided that he liked the way Stark’s eyes shone when he was trying to hold back laughter. “I was like the good china; brought out for special occasions, then wiped clean, and put away.”

“You are _awfully_ special,” Tony drawled, looking him up and down as if trying to decide where to begin licking first, and Bucky wondered if Stark ever flirted like this with Steve, and how that went over. Blushing, probably a lot of blushing. “All the best assassins are pretty and speak Russian. I’m picturing you with red hair, now. Spoiler alert: not a good look on you, James.”

“What _is_ a good look, Antoshka?”

There was a drawn out moment where he could actually hear Tony’s reflexive easy answer (“ _Me.”_ ) as if he’s said it, but instead Stark tilted his head a bit, his smile shifting into something else entirely, a sort of gentle, affectionate assessment. Bucky was instantaneously awash with concern, and unsure why.

“I like that. Diminutive of Anton? Steve doesn’t speak Russian, by the way.”

Bucky’s heart hammered in his ears, and then he was on his feet and standing in front of Stark, not sure when or how that happened. Tony had a hand up in the air, palm out, reminiscent of Iron Man preparing to use a repulsor blast, yet there was nothing that felt like a threat within the gesture. It was probably habit more than anything, and Bucky stilled, even though he was desperate to bolt from the room.

“I only mention it since I _do_ , and also because I’m pretty sure you’re unaware of the fact that _you_ have been, since coming down here.”

There was a ( _terrifyingly comforting in its awfulness_ ) sense of cold gripping him, but then Tony’s hand was on his shoulder, not to keep him from running, but to serve as an anchor, something to allow him to stabilize himself. And so he reached back, the metal shining, his arm flush against Tony’s, and thought of the red star currently peeking out from beneath the engineer’s hand.

“I had this anxiety disorder—maybe _had_ is an exaggeration, it’s better, at least—and it sucked. Sucks. The whole meltdown freakout, totally lame, embarrassing and awful, so this speaking Russian thing? Really not a big deal.”

“No?” Bucky watched his fingers as they bunched up a fistful of the fabric of Tony’s shirt. Stark’s eyes were still the same, though, unafraid, and compassionate in a way that had nothing to do with pity.

“Nope, just… Steve, he worries,” Tony continued. “He might read more into it than is really there.”

Bucky wasn’t sure how long they stood there, but at some point his breathing sounded less like he was about to begin sobbing, his heart was steady in his chest, and his fingers released their grip.

“Sergeant Barnes, might I use this as an opportunity to more formally offer up my services?” JARVIS interrupted.

There was an awkwardness in the moment when Bucky had to make himself stop touching Stark, take a few steps back. Tony suddenly took issue with something one of his bots was doing, and was across the room, scolding, an obvious ( _appreciated_ ) attempt to allow Bucky to converse with JARVIS in relative privacy.

“That, uh… sure?”

“I’m rather experienced in helping persons reacclimate themselves upon waking from a troubled sleep,” JARVIS explained. “As well as recognizing symptoms of anxiety when they present.”

“Thanks, JARVIS.” Bucky ran a hand over his face, feeling the exhaustion creeping back in around the edges. “Maybe let me know if I’m speaking Russian to anyone other than Tony, or Natasha?”

“Certainly sir. Might I also suggest some relaxation techniques? They may be of great benefit to you.”

“Sure.”

Bucky found himself slowly walking to the door, keeping up a steady stream of conversation with JARVIS as he made his way out, but then looked back over his shoulder. Tony was purposefully not watching him go, looking oddly dwarfed by the workshop somehow.

“Hey, Antoshka,” he called, and Tony glanced over his shoulder. “I’m not going to be able to sleep right now. Keep me company while I catch up on popular culture.”

He suspected that not making it a question was the correct approach, because a few minutes later Tony was leaving with him, rattling off suggestions for their viewing pleasure, and that felt much better than leaving alone.


End file.
